Present Possessive, Future Tense
by nyssa123
Summary: Lisbeth investigates a 66-year old murder and the theft of a valuable jewel. But the only man who can help her is an aging Belgian man... a man who retired from mystery a long time ago... Crack premise with a serious treatment.
1. Prologue

This is what happens when I go to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Tintin in rapid succession and then stay up too late.

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><p><span>Prologue<span>

There was a box inside a box. It was made of metal- cast iron- and weighed a ton. The outer box was really a chest, thick slats of oak and slightly rusted locks that gleamed a little in the dull light of the attic. Beatrice Hoder was seventy-nine years old, and had needed the help of her son Lucas to get the box upstairs.

It had to go upstairs. The basement was too damp, and the ground floor was too obvious. The attic was better- dry and full of dark corners. It was perfect for hiding something.

Beatrice was an old woman. The chest was also old. The metal box was of a more recent make. But it was what was inside both boxes that was the oldest thing of all.

Beatrice spoke Swedish with a faint Russian accent. It was a relic of her childhood. She answered the door, smiling, and politely asked, "Hello?" Her tongue rolled on the vowels.

And then there was a bang, and she simply gasped.

The old woman crumpled to the ground, but the man on her doorstep hauled her up again by the arm. Beatrice wailed and pressed a palm to her stomach, blood seeping out from between her fingers, and she was dragged into her kitchen and thrown onto the linoleum floor.

The man worked silently, pulling out drawers and checking under cabinets and in doors without a word. Beatrice moaned and then sobbed as the man kicked her.

He found the stairs just as her toes began to go numb.

As her vision started to go black at the edges, he used the butt of his gun to smash open the rusty lock on the chest. He reached in, pulled out the heavy metal box, and wrapped it carefully in his dark wool coat.

He crept down the stairs carefully as Beatrice began to choke on her own blood. As her fingers scrabbled at the leg of the closest chair, he flicked the safety off his gun and pressed it to her temple.

To the neighbors, it sounded as if a car had backfired.

The man left the house and strolled out into the black night, his bundled up coat tucked securely under one arm. He unlocked the door of his forest green Volvo and started the engine. It purred as he drove down the quiet street, the metal box and its contents hidden under the back seat of his car.

On the floor of her kitchen in a suburb of Stockholm, Beatrice Hoder's brains leaked into the collar of her cardigan.

It was nine o'clock at night.


	2. One

1

Lisbeth Salander was not wearing a bra. She sat at her laptop, smoking a cigarette with one hand and typing with the other in a pair of boxer shorts and a faded sweatshirt. The hood was up. She had not had a chance to shower.

Her apartment overlooked the snowy street and she stared out of the window blankly as she exhaled out of the side of her mouth. It was cold in the apartment, but she couldn't bring herself to stand up and change the thermostat. Instead she rubbed at the goose bumps on her pale, thin legs and listened to the drip of the faucet in the other room.

Her cell phone vibrated on the table next to her. She paused in her one-handed typing and picked it up, lancing at the screen impassively.

She answered. "What is it, Mikael?"

"Can't I call to say hello?"

Lisbeth took a drag on her cigarette.

"Uh." The man on the other line cleared his throat. "Can we meet?"

"Why?"

"Because I need some research done." Mikael paused. "And I haven't seen you in a while."

"Three months, twenty days." Lisbeth burned her fingertips on the end of the cigarette and let it fall onto an ashtray. "Where do you want to meet?"

"There's a restaurant, Gaffel Och Sked. It's on-"

"I know where it is. I'll see you at one thirty." Lisbeth pressed the end button and threw the phone onto the couch. It disappeared between the cushions.

The Gaffel Och Sked was a small restaurant. More of a café, really. The tables were mostly built to seat two people at most and they were crowded together under warm orange lamps. Mikael was sitting at a table in the corner, nursing a drink that had come in a very dark bottle, when Lisbeth came in. He stood as she pulled out her chair and sat down across from him, avoiding eye contact as usual.

"Hello." He smiled at her. She frowned.

"Hi. What's up?"

Straight to business, then. Mikael slid a folder to her across the table. "I'm doing an article on the Ivanski murders and the theft of the Jonasson jewels."

Lisbeth raised a bleached eyebrow and looked down at the folder, opening it. "I don't know what those things are."

"No. Right. Of course." Mikael sighed. "Back in the forties there were these jewels owned by the Jonasson family. Went back hundreds of years. The family had fragmented and the jewels were in all different places- one in America, one in Russia, and two here in Sweden. The one in America and one of the jewels in Sweden were both in private collections, but the second Swedish jewel and the Russian jewel were in museums."

"What kind of jewels were they?" Lisbeth didn't look up from the page.

"Diamonds. What else?" Mikael took a gulp of his drink. "Anyway, in 1944 the houses in America and Sweden were broken into and the diamonds were stolen. No one was home at the time. In early 1945 the Russian jewel was stolen while stolen from its display case at the museum." A young couple came in from the cold, chattering happily and bringing a gust of freezing air with them. Mikael wrapped his coat tighter around his shoulders. "Then in June 1945 the last jewel was stolen from the museum in Sweden. The curators, Sasha Ivanki and his daughter Anna, were staying late at the museum that night and were murdered by the thieves."

Lisbeth glowered at the tabletop. She had some choice thoughts on the topic of murder.

"Anyway, the diamonds were all missing until earlier this year, when the one stolen during the Ivanski murders was recovered in a basement in Stockholm." Mikael watched Lisbeth's face for any sign of a reaction. "It was handed over to Anna's daughter, one Beatrice Hoder."

"Stop." Lisbeth held up a hand, silencing her companion. "I heard about this. It was on the news last week."

"You were listening to the news?" Mikael said incredulously.

Lisbeth rolled her eyes. "Miriam had it on."

"So you heard about Hoder's murder, then?"

The girl nodded. "They weren't giving out many details, but I recognized the name when you mentioned it." She closed the file. "So they killed her and took the jewel?"

"Yes. How did you-?"

"It was an obvious progression. Seriously, Mikael." She slid the file back over to him. She already had every page stored in her photographic memory. "So you want me to get information for your article."

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

"I didn't say I didn't want to." Lisbeth scratched her neck where there had once been a tattoo of a wasp. "I'll do it." She stood up.

"Thank you." Mikael called to her retreating form. "Lisbeth-?"

She turned around. "What?"

"It was good to see you."

She smiled. It was a very small smile.


	3. Two

2

The old man was alone in his apartment. He had been alone for a very long time. He had a dog, once. And friends. He had even had enemies.

They were all dead now.

Brussels was experiencing the first snow of winter. Despite the cold air that leaked din through the windowsill that didn't completely close, it was warm in the apartment. The old man's sweater was blue, and his socks were argyle. He wore plus-fours in an outdated style, and his hair had once been a vibrant gingery orange.

He sat in his favorite armchair, eyes closed and glasses dangling from one hand. A book lay on his lap. The sounds of an engine broke through the cushions of snow and he turned his head to look out the window.

Someone on a motorcycle was coming down the street.


	4. Three

5

"I'm afraid I can't help you." He blinked at the young woman who sat across from him, hunched over his coffee table. "As you can tell, I'm not the man I used to be."

"Boy." She corrected, pointing to a framed newspaper clipping on the wall. "That's what they used to call you. The Boy Reporter."

He laughed softly. It hurt his chest. "Yes."

"How old were you in 1945?"

He met her eyes. "How old are you? Twenty-three? Twenty-four?"

"Twenty five." She seemed vaguely surprised. "But that's closer than most people guess."

"I'm no stranger to the experience of being older than you look." He leaned back against the chair, sagging a little. "I was seventeen."

The woman raised an invisible eyebrow.

"Mademoiselle Salander," he coughed, "Are you sure you want to talk to me? I can't be much help. After all, it's a sixty year old case."

"Sixty six years." Lisbeth countered. "And I honestly think you can help. If you refuse, I have other ways of getting the information." Her gaze had a steely glint. Her eyes were almost black. "Mr. Tintin."

There was a moment of silence. And then he spoke.

"It was just after the end of the war, and Europe was in ruins. Nearly all the old treasures had been stolen or destroyed- that the Jonasson jewels were still intact after all those years of fighting was a miracle.

When the first one went missing, it was sad. When the second one disappeared, it was a coincidence. But when the third one was stolen, it was a pattern.

I was here in Belgium at the time. I was staying with a friend when I heard about the first theft. I remember we were sitting in his house- it was more of a manor, if I'm honest, a hall- and the news came through on the evening radio."


	5. Four

5

_Belgium, 1945_

Tintin stood with his back to the room, fiddling with the dial on the '38 Pilot 53. The static tuned and became clearer, uncovering the unmistakable high notes of Bianca Castafiore, the Milanese Nightingale.

"Ah! My beauty, past compare! These jewels bright I wear-!"

"Blistering barnacles! Change the station!" Captain Archibald Haddock groaned, clapping hands over his ears melodramatically. "Thundering typhoons, three continents and a world war later and I still can't get rid of her!"

"Come on, Captain, it's not that bad." Tintin grinned. There was a yelp of pain and he looked down to see his dog cowering at his feet, paws covering his own soft ears. "Oh Snowy, you too?"

Haddock grumbled. "Just switch to something else! There're plenty of stations."

The young reporter rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. I'll look for something else." He twiddled the bronze knobs carefully, trying to cut through the interference.

"This is the Belgian radio news service. The time is four o'clock. Today's headlines…"

"That's better." Captain Haddock sighed. "No singing."

"… the bodies found au Musée des Artefects Valables early this morning have been identified as those of Monsieur et Madame Sasha and Anna Ivanski, the curators of the museum. The bodies were discovered at five o'clock this morning. The last of the priceless Jonasson diamonds was also missing and is believed by the authorities to have been stolen. The deaths are being investigated as murder."

"Great snakes!" Tintin ran a hand through his springy orange hair. "That's awful! And the diamond missing… the last of its kind!"

Snowy growled.

Raising an eyebrow, Captain Haddock took a puff of his pipe. "It's a shame, alright."

"The person who did this isn't just a thief- they're a murderer!" Tintin threw up his hands. "They have to be stopped! Who knows what could happen if they're allowed to run free?"

Haddock got to his feet. "Oh, no. I know that look."

There was a gleam in Tintin's eye. "I've spent the past few years solving mysteries all over the world, Captain. Maybe it's time I returned to my roots."

"Does this mean we're taking a trip to Russia?"

"Don't be silly, Captain." Tintin straightened the collar of his jacket and strode out the doors of the parlor. "We're going to find this diamond thief!"


End file.
